Natural disasters are on the rise. There is an increasing need for emergency assemblies that may be rapidly deployed to the disaster sites and quickly manipulated to form a habitable structure. Such structures may be used for homes, schools, medical care facilities, and so forth. It will be appreciated that such structures may be useful in other applications, such as military operations and temporary work locations (e.g., oil fields).
Emergency structures have been proposed. However, existing emergency structures are not efficiently transportable and/or do not provide for a habitable and robust structure.
It is important that the assembly be certified by the appropriate organization such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) such that the assembly is ready to transport the moment it is needed. Thus, embodiments of the present invention are directed to containers that include dwelling members therein, with the container meeting ISO standards (i.e., being an ISO container).
It is also important that the assembly be approved or certified by the appropriate entity such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) such that, when the container reaches its destination, the dwelling members may be manipulated to form a comfortable, habitable and robust structure. With regard to natural disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) now requires emergency housing to be HUD-approved.